Brooklyn Judge Who Made Racist, Homophobic Comments Agrees to Resign
A New York judge who was facing an upcoming hearing to consider whether she had engaged in misconduct has resigned from the bench.Last Friday, Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court Judge Harriet L.
Thompson, 67, gave notice to New York’s top administrative judge in a letter that she would retire from the court on March 1, the New York Times reports.A condition of her resignation agreement was that she would not seek or accept any judicial positions in the future and would discontinue any litigation she had initiated against the Judicial Conduct Commission.There was to be a hearing on the charges on January 17.The commission administrator, Robert Tembeckian, released a statement regarding Thompson’s resignation. “The conduct charged against Judge Thompson was egregious and, if established at trial, would have warranted her removal from office,” he wrote.“She now claims a medical condition prevents her from performing judicial duties, which opens a different path in furtherance of the public interest for her immediate and permanent departure from the bench.”Thompson’s troubles have been working themselves through the review process.A senior New York judge wrote in a filing that Thompson said that “being gay is an abomination to mankind” and that Hispanic people had a “deceitful trait that goes way back to biblical times.”An affidavit last year included anti-LGBTQ+ language attributed to Thompson.“I hate these gay white men,” she said before going on that “gay racist f-a--ts ...
trying to ruin me and get me,” and that “Being gay is an abomination to mankind. The Holy Ghost [is] going to get them.”Thompson also said that she “assumed the litigant was a liar” whenever a litigant had a Hispanic-sounding name, according to the.
